In a telephone communications systems, certain switching equipment is located in the telephone central office and other equipment is located on the subscriber's premises. For business subscribers and other subscribers requiring multiple lines or certain advanced features, a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) can be used to provide these features and services. Central offices equipped with Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) are able to provide modern advanced services such as call forwarding, call waiting, and a number of other features. A service available to telephone subscribers is ESSX service which essentially provides the advanced features and benefits of a PBX without the PBX hardware. The ESSX service is provided from the ESS central office with equipment that is monitored and maintained by the telephone company.
On the subscriber's premises, the telephone company provides test jacks known as RJ21X jacks. On most cutovers to the ESSX service, vendor technicians do their cross-connect work at the same time that telephone company technicians are cutting over to the ESSX service and the telephone marketing technicians are testing the station features. On many cutovers, subscriber equipment rooms containing the RJ21X jacks are located in areas that are not easily accessed and do not have enough space for marketing and vendor technicians to work at the same time. Consequently, someone has to wait. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it will be highly desirable to eliminate the time wasted waiting for the equipment vendors to do their cross-connect work on the RJ21X jack.
When access to the test jack is gained, it takes a number of seconds to attach a test set onto the closely spaced terminals of the test jack using alligator clips. On some tests, two marketing technicians are required to test the service features effectively. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it would be highly desirable to reduce the amount of time to clip a test set onto the test jack and to reduce the number of persons required to test service features.
Sometimes, the test jacks are hard to access. Some equipment rooms are located in areas that are not easily accessed and the RJ21X jacks are mounted in areas such as closets, under stairwells, high on the walls, and in narrow openings. Working in cramped, unpleasant equipment areas causes premature fatigue and increases wasted time. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it would be highly desirable to test service features from a convenient location.